Seven generations on one Monferrato hill.

Mazzetti d’Altavilla is a family grappa distillery in the Monferrato, the wine hills of southern Piedmont, with its headquarters at Altavilla Monferrato in the province of Alessandria. It dates itself to 1846. The company says Filippo Mazzetti lit his first still in the Monferrato that year, travelling Piedmont — the Monferrato, the Canavese, the Langhe and the Roero — in search of the best pomace, and that his son Luigi later moved the distillery up the hill at Altavilla into a former monastery, “the house in which we still work today.” The food magazine Gazzetta del Gusto, visiting in November 2023, wrote that the family bought and restored the old convent in the early 1900s.

Local newspapers have marked the anniversaries. La Vita Casalese, the weekly of Casale Monferrato, reported in September 2016 that the company was beginning its 170th year of distilling, in a story that continues “uninterrupted for seven generations,” and in November 2021 that it was celebrating 175 years since its founding. The company’s present slogan is “Distillatori da 180 anni.”

The family has owned the business since its founding, and the company says it is now run by its seventh generation together with the sixth. It credits Franco Mazzetti with building the modern company over more than fifty years, widening the range into liqueurs and taking the brand abroad. In December 2021 the trade site Beverfood named Cesare Mazzetti as the company’s president and Silvia Belvedere Mazzetti as its young commercial lead; a company release in July 2026 calls her director general. The company names Chiara, Silvia and Elisa as the seventh generation now at its head.

Local pomace, three stills and a barrel cellar under the hill.

The company’s account of its method stresses speed and the single grape. It says its pomace comes only from Piedmont, from wineries less than an hour from the distillery, within 48 hours of pressing, and that each variety is distilled on its own — among them Moscato, Nebbiolo from Barolo and Barbaresco, Barbera, Arneis, Grignolino, Brachetto, Dolcetto, Cortese, Erbaluce, Ruchè and Malvasia di Casorzo. It describes three methods used side by side, choosing one for each batch: the bain-marie, discontinuous distillation with direct steam, and a semi-continuous method for extracting the low wines. Only the “heart” of each run is kept, the company says, with the cut made by the person at the still rather than by software.

Ageing happens in what the company calls the family barricaia, a barrel cellar dug into the hill holding more than three hundred barriques. Some casks, it says, previously held port, sherry, bourbon or Vermouth di Torino, and give its Barrel Finish grappas. Gazzetta del Gusto wrote in 2023 that the master distiller Sanzio Evangelisti had worked with the family for more than thirty years.

Two local grapes sit at the front of the recent range. La Vita Casalese reported in 2016 that the Grappa 7.0, made from Ruchè, a rare grape of the Monferrato, would be poured at that year’s Grapperie Aperte open day for the first time in the event’s history, and in 2021 that a grappa of Malvasia di Casorzo had been created in 2020 for a line called Radici. The company says it went “beyond grappa” from the 1960s, and today it also makes gin, liqueurs and a Vermouth di Torino Superiore based on Malvasia di Casorzo.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Italian grappa names: Berta, Mazzetti d’Altavilla, Marzadro, Bocchino, Sibona, Castagner and Bonollo. Grappa is a spirit distilled from pomace, the skins, seeds and pulp left over once grapes have been pressed for wine, so a grappa house depends on the wineries around it, and its range is often organised by grape variety, by the wine the pomace came from, or by how long the spirit has spent in wood.

Many grappa houses still carry a family name, and several of the brands here are linked to the northern regions where much of Italy’s grappa is made, including Veneto, Trentino and Piedmont. A family name on a label does not on its own say who owns the business today, where the pomace is distilled or where the bottles are filled, and a single surname can belong to more than one company.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its grappa is distilled and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A historic mark, kept in an archive.

The brand’s history is kept on paper as well as in barrels. In December 2021 Beverfood reported that Mazzetti d’Altavilla had been entered as a Marchio Storico di Interesse Nazionale — a “historic trademark of national interest,” the Italian register for marks in use for at least fifty years, held at the Italian Patent and Trademark Office — with the inclusion confirmed by the Ministry of Economic Development. The report said the mark appears on a historic collection of documents kept in the company archive: shipping notes, invoices, labels, advertising signs and trade-fair stands.

Some of that archive is on show. La Vita Casalese reported in 2016 that the company was opening a gallery called “170 Anni di Grappa,” a tunnel lined with historic photographs, old bottles and vintage labels leading to its grappa shop, alongside a historical exhibition on how the spirit, its bottles and its labels changed. The paper also described the votive chapel “La Rotonda,” dated to 1808, in the historic park beside the distillery.

The site is now run as a visitor centre the company calls the Casa della Grappa: guided tours of the working stills and the barrel cellar, a grappa store in the old cellars and, on the floor where the family lived until a few years earlier, the restaurant Materia Prima, according to Gazzetta del Gusto’s 2023 report. In 2026, the company’s 180th year, it launched a new website.

For a design guide, Mazzetti d’Altavilla shows how a grappa house can turn its age, its archive and a single hill into an identity. Compare Poli, another family grappa distillery with a museum, and Cocchi, the Asti house of Piedmontese vermouth. For this guide we use still copper, Ruchè red and limestone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Mazzetti d’Altavilla’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.